The wait is over! Yes, the anticipated sequel to We Do Not Kill Children by Penelope Wallace is finally here.

The 10th Province of Jaryar is the second book in the Tales from Ragaris series and is sure to delight those who enjoyed Wallace’s debut novel (we think it’s a better book than the first, but then we might be a little biased).

This second tale from the world of swords without misogyny is set in a different part of the world to the first book and confronts more themes that are especially prevalent in a world where elections are common place and often taken for granted.

To the hall with six flames

Call the great of the nine

For an heir to the king.

They will seek for a sign.

Who should rule the powerful land of Jaryar when its childless king dies? Instead of preparing for war, the two contenders agree to that extraordinary thing, an election.

“A contest? A duel? A game of chess?”

“Yes, perhaps. A fair game.”

Fifty-one high-ranking men and women will hear the arguments, and then choose between Queen Nerranya of Marod and Duke Haras of Vard.

So everyone comes to the peaceful city of Vach-roysh, capital of the land that gave up its independence long ago – the Tenth Province of Jaryar.

They bring their prejudice and ambition, bribery and blackmail – and the prophecy uttered by a dying woman.

And murder. For this game is far from fair.

Bowing down to be raised

For the Dream, and God’s law –

But the sheep, they all wait

For mild peace or grim war.

You can pre-order your copy of the 10th Province of Jaryar now – set for release on the 11th of 12th 2017.

With the relaunch and reworking of the Nicolette Mace: the Raven Siren series there are now even more stories set to come through to flesh out the world. The sixth story in the Siren series in the Murder of Michael Hollingsworth and it’s out now!

The Nicolette Mace: the Raven Siren series is a film noir, hard-boiled satire that is filled with sarcasm, gun play, biting wit and a trio that specialises in crime solving in between drinking, falling in love and running from the shadows of their past.

The Murder of Michael Hollingsworth is the 65th book by C.S. Woolley, is part of the Beginnings Saga (and can be found in Beginnings) and is dedicated to her friends that Hollingsworth is named after.

It has been a while coming, but the latest instalment in the Nicolette Mace: the Raven Siren series is finally here.

Though releases like Sabrina may have kept your Siren cravings satisfied for a short while, finally book 4 in the main saga is here to answer questions about what happened to Fred, Siren, Rick and yes, Harry too.

“I wasn’t going to write more than three books in the main Siren narrative, but the Lily & Rose Saga was a book that just was begging to be written, after all, it didn’t feel right to leave the fate of Fred and Siren hanging in limbo forever.” – C.S. Woolley

The Lily & Rose Saga is set a few years after the events of the Derek Long Saga, so there is a little bit of a time lapse that readers can fill in the gaps for. It is also the penultimate book in the main narrative.

“The only main narrative book that is left to do is Legacy. Once that is done, then it will be the end of the Siren series. Before Legacy comes though there are a fair few of the shorter infill books planned and there is a bumper collection of five books that will contain all the Siren stories in chronological order – just to make it a little easier to read.” – C.S. Woolley

Though it is nearly the end of the road for the sassy private detective, the Lily & Rose Saga is out now in paperback and digital formats.

We have something a little different for you all today, rather than posting about Good Friday and the symbolism of Easter, the Mightier Than the Sword UK blog is being taken over not by one of our authors, but by one of the characters.

We are handing over the blog to Cassandra, guardian of the wilds from the Chronicles of Celadmore series for a look at the downsides to being immortal, at least as far as she is concerned.

Something that all mortals seem to yearn for is a way to cheat death, to live beyond their years and often trying to gain immortality. There are some who spend their entire lives seeking eternal youth combine with eternal life, and others that come to the conclusion that they need to live longer when the autumn years of their life descend.

But no matter how they try to cheat death, they cannot escape it. But living forever is not all that it seems to be. There are several reasons that I have found that make immortality particularly unpalatable.

Finding the armour you had 300 years ago is back in style and you have no idea where you left it.

Keeping large amounts of gold in one location invariably leads to adventurers trying to either rob you, battle you for your gold hoard or creating grandiose myths that cause armies to try and storm your home.

Keeping gold in multiple locations leads to you having to draw a map to keep track of where all of it is kept. after 100 years, people steal it thinking it is a treasure map.

Being a great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother not only is a bit of a mouthful, but the only other person that can relate to how old it makes you feel is your mother.

Trying to keep the same waist line over the millennia is a lot harder than most people think.

Watching mortals bicker is funny at first, but after 2,000 years it becomes rather boring when the same arguments keeping coming around. You begin to wonder how it is that they haven’t worked out some kind of compromise.

When someone finds your diary from your teenage years and they start gushing about discovering an ancient manuscript in a dead language that must hold the knowledge of ancients is actually quite hurtful.

You have to spend your entire existence watching those that you love wither and die before your eyes. No matter how many times it happens, the pain only seems to grow as you carry more loss in your heart. It keeps growing until you stop caring and will death to take you.

Curious as to why Cassandra is so concerned with making immortality sound less attractive? You’ll be able to find out on Monday when When Darkness Falls, book 7 in the Chronicles of Celadmore is released.

The day has finally come for Brothers! There have been a few delays with this particular book, but we are thrilled to announce that it has finally been released.

This debut novel from Marlena R. Smith is a tale of love and loyalty between brothers-in-arms – though it isn’t without its dark side. To give you a better idea of what to expect from this book, here is the blurb.

SOLDIERS ARE THERE TO KILL AND BE KILLED

They see us only as numbers, as less than them, created to be Soldiers made to fight in their war. But we are more than that, we are brothers, we gave ourselves names.

Some of us will live through training, but some of us will die. Soldiers are there to be killed, whether from their tests or because we fail in our mission. Soldiers are there to kill, fighting in a war we didn’t ask for.

But even amongst brothers there are secrets. There is something that they are not telling me. My brothers tell me I’m special, but I just don’t see it. Soldiers are there to kill and be killed, so why am I so important? Brotherhood will be put to the test as we battle to be the best. I am a soldier, I was made to fight their war, I cannot lose.

Brothers is available from Amazon, our Etsy Store, Smashwords and other good retailers.

Not only are we celebrating the release of Brothers today, we are also getting excited about the next book in the Mysteries of Stickleback Hollow. All Hallows’ Eve in Stickleback Hollow is set for release on 20th March and is the latest instalment in the life of Lady Sarah Montgomery Baird Watson-Wentworth, and here to whet your appetite for the next cosy mystery is the brand new cover and the book blurb.

When her parents die from fever, Lady Sarah Montgomery Baird Watson-Wentworth has to leave India, a land she was born and raised in, and travel to England for the first time. Finding it almost impossible to adjust to London society, Sarah flees to the county of Cheshire and the country estate of Grangeback that borders the village of Stickleback Hollow. A place filled with oddballs, eccentrics and more suspicious characters than you can shake a stick at, Sarah feels more at home in the sleepy little village than she ever did in the big city, however, even sleepy little villages have mysteries that must be solved.

It’s all Hallows’ Eve in Stickleback Hollow and the annual ball at Tatton Park is being held. It’s Sarah’s first formal engagement since leaving London, and she isn’t looking forward to it – especially when the people she thinks of as friends are not invited. The veil between the spirit and living worlds is at its thinnest, and evil forces seem to be lurking everywhere.

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Today we are handing over the blog to C.S. Woolley as there is an answer to a question she wishes to provide:

So a brief extract from my latest book has been shared and if you have seen it, you may feel like you recognise it. Yes, I am quoting Star Wars in the paragraph. The chapter the extract is taken from is called “A bad day at the Post Office”. This is what I call Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. The reason behind this is that the droid factory scene really does look like someone is having a bad day at the post office. It has stuck and I find it just as amusing now as I did when I first mentioned it to a friend.

As this chapter was given the same name, I decided to have some fun with it.

“In short the Post Office was the most wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it was our only hope.”

This sentence is a merger of Obi Wan’s line to Luke in Episode 4 and Leia’s message to Obi Wan in the same movie. The barman in the Post Office is George, which is an obvious reference to George Lucas who created the Star Wars series – the man who set up and runs the Post Office could hardly be called anything else, but don’t worry there isn’t a Jar Jar Binks in sight.

To give you some context, this is the extract taken from the book:

“The Post Office isn’t actually a post office. It used to be. It was supposedly abandoned now, but the boarded up front did nothing to hide the fact that it was being used as the biggest underground trading network in the city. If you needed information, guns, a new identity, a place to hide from the police or anything even remotely criminal, then the post office was the place to go to find it.

In short the Post Office was the most wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it was our only hope.”

If you want to get your own copy of Sabrina, it’s out now in paperback and digital formats from all good retailers, but you can download it direct from the Mightier Than the Sword UK etsy store for 19p less than on amazon http://etsy.me/2iBjdFt

It’s official, the debut novel from Penelope Wallace is here, and we couldn’t be more excited!

We Do Not Kill Children is out today across a wide range of platforms that include:

iBooks UK

iBooks US

iBooks Canada

iBooks Australia

iBooks New Zealand

You can also find out more about We Do Not Kill Children in the books section of our site. You can get We Do Not Kill Children direct from our Etsy Store in digital and paperback format.

About We Do Not Kill Children

“We do not kill children; we do not commit rape; we do not take pleasure in torment.”

Dorac Kingsbrother was one of the King’s Thirty in the kingdom of Marod. That was before he was found guilty of the murder of Lord Gahran’s three children. Though Gahran was a traitor, his children were innocent. The code of the King’s Thirty leaves no room for such a barbaric act, and for this heinous crime Dorac faces a life in exile.

The shame of such a sentence is something that Dorac can’t brook, and so he sets off on a journey to the Old Stones, the place where those that seek death meet their end. Followed by Gormad, a child in search of adventure, Dorac is not alone on his final journey.

But not everyone believes that Dorac is guilty. Gemara Kingsister, head of the Six, investigates the murder of Gahran’s children; though there is more at stake than the life of a lone warrior in this, the first of the Tales from Ragaris.

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Yes, the debut novel from Penelope Wallace is coming on 14th November!

We Do Not Kill Children is set in the fantasy realm of Ragaris, where the country of Marod can be found. We don’t want to give away too may details just yet, but we do have the cover art and the blurb to share with you all – besides the official release date.

“We do not kill children; we do not commit rape; we do not take pleasure in torment.”

Dorac Kingsbrother was one of the King’s Thirty in the kingdom of Marod. That was before he was found guilty of the murder of Lord Gahran’s three children. Though Gahran was a traitor, his children were innocent. The code of the King’s Thirty leaves no room for such a barbaric act, and for this heinous crime Dorac faces a life in exile.

The shame of such a sentence is something that Dorac can’t brook, and so he sets off on a journey to the Old Stones, the place where those that seek death meet their end. Followed by Gormad, a child in search of adventure, Dorac is not alone on his final journey.

But not everyone believes that Dorac is guilty. Gemara Kingsister, head of the Six, investigates the murder of Gahran’s children; though there is more at stake than the life of a lone warrior in this, the first of the Tales from Ragaris.

We will be releasing more details as it gets closer to the release date, so watch this space!

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The sequel to Rising Empire: Part 1 is OUT NOW!

Follow the continuing tale of Queen Kasnata as she forges a reputation that will last for centuries. We asked C.S. Woolley how she felt about the latest volume in the Chronicles of Celadmore and what impact the book has on the rest of the series.

“I was really excited about going back and telling the story of characters that are mentioned and not really seen in the Shroud of Darkness Trilogy. The plan for the Rising Empire novels has been in my head since I started writing Shroud of Darkness. It isn’t so much to provide backstory, you don’t need to have read them before you read the Shroud of Darkness trilogy, but at the same time, they do go a long way to establishing a lot of the history that you read about in that trilogy. I really enjoyed getting to go back and outline the events that happened before moving on with the rest of the series. There are also things in the Rising Empire books that are going to be really important later on, so I felt that going back and getting them written was the right thing to do.”

The blood moon rises and madness is unleashed.

The nine kingdoms of Celadmore are at war. The people suffer under tyrants that strive to gain land and power in the struggle for superiority.

Kasnata, Queen of the Order and Queen of Nosfa leads her armies against the people of Delma. A war she did not want to fight, but her husband, the King of Nosfa, Mercia Nosfa VI has forced her hand.

Leinad, the heir to the throne of Nosfa and son of Kasnata, is held hostage in the city of Grashindorph where revolution is beginning. Hermia, mother of Mercia and former Queen of Nosfa leads the revolution against her son, a revolution to end the wars and tyranny that their people suffer under. Kasna and Kia are safe from their father in the Oasis of Tulna, but Duke Kelmar DeLacey, Regent of Delma, still hunts for them.

Kasnata’s empire is growing and her legacy is being forged through war, not diplomacy, a mantle her people will carry down the ages.

But there is more at work than any mortal knows, their lives, though fleeting, will form the realm and the consequences of their actions will be felt for centuries to come.